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Hello I have 2 drives bricked : one 7200.11 and one ES.2 I tried to contact seagate for 10 days, and got anything but professional responses (I have a ton of seagates drives, those guys just don't want to keep their customers, one day they will pay for that). I've read all the stuff on that topic. The 2 solutions are nearly identical, but the differences are not only the ones you list : one isolates the heads, one the motor, and that is pretty much a difference. I just need a working solution, period. The aviko one, taking in account only the commands, seems to be less disruptive, but I really don't know which part should be isolated, motor or heads. It's impossible to get the truth between 2 people whose words to each other are insults and "you are all wrong". Why do they fight like that ? The only result of all this will be in people's mind : "DO NOT TRUST DATA RECOVERY COMPANIES, THEY'LL TRY TO FOOL YOU IN SAYING THAT THE COMPETITOR IS LYING". Right, i forgot that. I'm not a data recover professional, like all the people there, except Aviko who seems to be the only who work in data recovery field (for what I know). I only realized that seems there's more tecnology in hard drives than in Formula 1 cars. about isolating... This is all we know till now about that. You can do trial and errors, or ask for someone else opinion. you need the truth...well, just remember that this is a DIY solution on a public and not-professional forum. There's almost no fails still now but, of course, noone will take warranty of your drives. If you don't want accept any risk you have to go to professionals. period. Anyway, there're no data recovery companies in competition here.

I think there's always voltage in it once the drivers are properly installed...but: It seems there are 2 type of nokia cables. One is self-powered thru USB, one needs an external 3.3v power to work. Usually, the latter has more wires (tx, rx, data gnd, 3.3v in, 3.3v gnd, and maybe other stuff). So, maybe you just need to connect a 3v battery to it. There is a great guide here that show you how identify and check your Nokia cable. I already posted this link so many times, I hope this would be the last one. Please take a look at older posts or do some searches, most of the common problems are already covered in this thread. Here're my own 2 general little advices: 1. Always double check your terminal connection before plug any wire to the Seagate drive. I see many people here connecting random wires from random cables they found in their drawers. Connecting a standard straight USB cable to your HD is not a good idea. 2. If you get strange characters in the terminal window after connecting the drive, be careful at what you type in it! In my first attemp to recover my drive I got only random characters because I didn't connected the ground wire on the drive third pin, but actually, what I was typing were sent to the drive. I tested it: I was able to spin off the motor (/2 & Z) even without see nothing readable in the terminal window... Be patient and good luck with the fix! I follow this soap opera since the first early posts at the original 7200.11 Falling down thread on seagate forums. So, chronologically: Till 16 January 2009 we were all lost and confused and angry and many other things, then Shuky posted this on elektroda.pl forum: http://www.elektroda.pl/rtvforum/viewtopic...6012404#6012404 As you can see there Nirvanowiec give him a link to: http://yura.projektas.lt/files/seagate/720011_ES2.html where, for the first time, were given a solution for fix the 7200.11 CC and BSY errors, by Yura. In that page (in Polish) there's no date, I think it was up since early January 2009. Then, one day later, 17 January 2009, Shuky alias Gsustek, posted the first solution in english, based on Yura's page above, in the hddguru forum. The thread was deleted and reposted two days later. In the google cache there's still the original one: http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:c_-5M...t=clnk&cd=2 I posted myself in that thread, as well as Aviko. (who also contacted me with a Pm for give help, I never answered him back, there was a bad mood there in that forum and many people were trying to misinform about those info. Still now some of them are doing that. Now I'm very sorry about it, Aviko, I was wrong. Thank you for that pm) So we arrived at 18 January 2009, when Gradius posted his solution on this thread (based on the Shuky (gsustek)' one posted the day before) also adding that aesthetically pleasant graphic with TX and RX legend instead of ugly ascii art (the pic with the drive and tx/rx arrows insted was first posted by fatlip in the previous '7200.11 Troubles' thread) and original credit links to Yura and Shuky post, now removed. So this are the fact by my point of view. Personally, I don't give a thing about donations or other stuff like that (actually, Gradius was and is very helpfull with many people and in many circumstances in this thread), I only think that should be right to give credit to people who saved us all. A noticeable thing is that, now, Gradius and Aviko solutions are quite the same. Don't be confused, the only difference is that Aviko removed the command i4,1,22 because, as he explained, it isn't essential and it can damage data on the drive in some cases. He also added other commands for testing purposes only (F712,F,,22). As you can see, this was a very long story. I really wish that there'll be a happy end now. We recovered out data, other people will recover their drive with this thread and this is really beautiful. So, make love not war Happy fixing!

Yura was the one who gave us the solution we're talking about in this thread. period. come on, pichi and fatlip...you already did it, but some people seem to not understand, tell them who is the one who save our data. He deserves it.

I have to agree at some part. Yura was the first and only one who revealed the top secret command we were all hard looking for fix out our dead drives, the (now) well known m0,2,2,,,,,22. Yep, he is the HERO! And don't misunderstand me, please. Then Shuky, as gsustek, re-posted the solution on the hddguru forum, and I remember I was more happy to see some people there going on business panic than to found finally a solution for my data lost. (If their business was built on a secret command, how trust them as professional people who do critical/important data recovery?) After, Gradius2 made this thread with his well written tutorial. Top Kudos go to Fatlip and pichi for their hard work, since their early posts at seagate forums (yeah, before censorships and bans), top kudos go to Gradius for his great translation work and his help here in the forum, and kudos go to everyone helped in any way to solve this. It's a long story and it's a beautiful story after all. We came here angry and so restless for our data. Then, post after post, we figured it out. We win. Seagate people admitted their fault (and now they have to deal with it). We had our data back and now we're helping people to solve problems that were our problem till yesterday. So, I see an happy end here. Yep, this is my point of view of the whole story.

People, as I said before, you all should always do a sanity check on your connection before connect any wire to the Seagate hard drive! Actually, trying connecting random cables you found in your drawers may damage permanently your USB port or your hard drive! So be safe! By now, as I can remember, the right phone cables used for the fix were Nokia DKU-5, CA-42 and CA-45. I remember Shuky also used a cable for Siemens 35 series but I don't know the exact model. Usually, phone cables with built-in serial converter have a longer USB plug. Other than phone cables, there's a plenty of adapters of any kind here that will work for the fix. Just read carefully this thread, I'm sure almost all the info you need are already here.

oh well, i didn't noticed that.. CA-53. If you checked one of the links in my previous post above you'ld already know that: Now I just wonder how your system can't recognize a straight, generic usb data cable...

You should install the drivers that come with it. Note that for most clone cables there'are no Vista drivers. Your previously quote from other forum were about some linux commands, but yep, right pop-port pin are 6 (RX), 7 (TX) e 8 (GND, if you need to use it). You all should always check your connection before connect any wire to the seagate drive. Be safe!

no one knows, colors are not standard. A continuity tester/voltmeter and this link will help you. Good info about indentifing wires and checking the connection is here. If you don't have a continuity tester/voltemeter i posted a very rogh test for indentify each wire here. Be careful and use at your own risk! good luck! PS: for all the people who feel uncomfortable with wires, volts and terminal windows, always remember that seagate seems to offer free data recovery for 7200.11.

Tokuro, you're right too. 3.3v is already in RX/GND and TX/GND. With a little help of a volt meter you can find the ground: connecting the negative pole to the ground wire and the positive to RX or TX you will see that 3.3 voltage in the meter. Once you set up your terminal session, by typing some random chars in the terminal you'll see in the meter that voltage slighty go up or down in the TX line, the other one should stay fixed on 3.3v. With this you can find RX and TX wire too and then you're done, connect TX and RX to the HD and if you don't share a common ground (if you use your notebook for the usb plug and another PSU for powering the HD) connect the ground wire on the HD pin 2 as showed on one of my previous posts. My cable had 6 wires and the right ones were white (GND), yellow (TX) and blue (RX) but sadly there're no standard colors. If you don't have a volt meter, you can also do a very rough test. Set up your terminal session and slightly let touch 2 wires at once. If you see come up strange characters in your terminal window, then you have in your hands RX and GND wires. Then, type random characters in your terminal and do the same with the other wire and when you'll see what you type come back in your terminal window it just means you connected RX and TX togheter (a loopback connection!!). Do some trial and error and don't be hurry! Good luck! It's the same -nameless- brand i bought! The only thing is that mine was CA-42, this is CA-45. I cannot be sure, but I think the only difference is in the phone plug model, the long usb connector seems to be the same as mine. Inside it there's a chinese USB to Serial Arkmicron chip. Note that for those chips there're no Vista drivers, XP only. You may also check on pinouts.ru website for be sure it has TX/RX/3.3v. Well, I've just chopped it off. And it has 3 cables: Black, Red and White. You were right: it installs as "Arkmicro USB to SERIAL" in my XP notebook. You were also right: my vista PC won't install it. (no drivers) You were right too: It is a long USB connector identical as the one seen in the CA-42 and DKU-5 pictures on the net. But... are you sure I've to check if one of the 3 cables is 3.3V???? I was assuming that the 3 cables were for TX, RX and GROUND. Am I wrong??? Greets, ToKuRo.

It's the same -nameless- brand i bought! The only thing is that mine was CA-42, this is CA-45. I cannot be sure, but I think the only difference is in the phone plug model, the long usb connector seems to be the same as mine. Inside it there's a chinese USB to Serial Arkmicron chip. Note that for those chips there're no Vista drivers, XP only. You may also check on pinouts.ru website for be sure it has TX/RX/3.3v.

hello guys, I'm just writing from my ex-bsy-death 7200.11!!! (i'm gonna cry, i missed my data so much! ) I used a cheap CA-42 data cable clone for Nokia phones, bought on ebay (4€). I think it's the best deal because it's already self-powered by the USB and uses a nice 3.3 voltage (i tested it with a volt meter). You can find very useful info about pins and terminal checks here. I had only one problem: after connecting TX and RX cables i got only a few garbage characters in my terminal window. I figured out connecting a third wire to the HD, the ground! In this way: [ 1 2 3 4 ] [sata] [power] -> [1=none] [2=GND from USB cable] [3=TX from USB] [4=RX from USB] I think i needed that because my usb cable was plugged in my netbook while the power plug was from the main computer PSU. I don't know exactly but, anyway, it worked flawless! Hope this can help someone! many thanks to everyone who contribuited to make that possible, except Seagate peremptorily censorship and some (very kindly and professional, you should say) people at hddguru forum. i have to go, it's backup time now!!

SO, is there anyone who successfull recovered a drive that had more than one partition? My busy drive is divided into 3 NFTS partitions and i'm a bit worried about doing the fix right now. Most of the important data is in the extended third one.

Question: when you say 'POWER OFF/ON' you mean to unplug and replug the ALI molex from the HD PCB? or turn off the pc? Should be the molex already on the HD PCB when you connect to the HD via terminal?